On 2022-03-19 the Free Software Foundation awarded me the 2021 Award for Outstanding New Free Software Contributor. The award ceremony took place in the context of this year’s LibrePlanet conference, where this video message of mine was shown.

What I said:

Hello everyone! My name is Protesilaos. Some friends call me “Prot” and you are welcome to do the same.

I wish to thank the Free Software Foundation for this award. I was not expecting it, just as I was not expecting to make any kind of contribution to GNU Emacs, given my non-technical background.

As I also say in my presentation for LibrePlanet 2022 my background was not tech-related: it was in the humanities and I eventually learnt to program by tinkering with Emacs and all the free software resources that were given to me.

So while this award is given to an individual, I think it actually is all about the community. How the community—how all those unsung heroes—have helped a given person achieve certain things. And this is because when I came to Emacs, when I switched to Emacs, when I joined this milieu two-and-a-half years ago I discovered everything I needed. There was high quality documentation, an excellent program in the face of GNU Emacs, lots of blogs and tutorials and everything and, of course, interactions with different people from where you always get to learn something new.

So I wish to thank everyone from this broader community for all their efforts and all their contributions. Without them I wouldn’t be anywhere and I think it’s fair to say that without the unsung heroes in our life in general, no individual would achieve anything of significance.

I wish to thank, in particular, some people who have been very helpful in my time as an Emacs user; who have helped me learn things. And those are, in no particular order: Daniel Mendler, Manuel Uberti, Nicolas De Jaeghere, and Omar Antolín Camarena. So I wish to thank those and, of course, everyone else. Thanks to the FSF for this award!

Read more about the awards on the FSF’s website.

Also watch my presentation: LibrePlanet 2022: Living in freedom with GNU Emacs

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